


flower past reason

by trykynyx



Series: our worlds have never gone outside each other [1]
Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Gen, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 21:35:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4115701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trykynyx/pseuds/trykynyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hernando is sitting at a table by the window overlooking the stairs to the service alley. He beams at Wolfgang like he’s glad to see him, like they know each other, like they’re friends. There is a reverberating pang in Wolfgang’s chest, like he just took a blow, but also like he’s feeling the echo of an old ache. </p><p>It’s just too fucking weird, this almost-knowing, already-caring he feels even as his brain starts and stutters over it like it’s a scratched CD. He meets Hernando’s gaze, lifting his chin, and glares like he’s anyone else Wolfgang wants to scare off. Hernando’s smile falters, the hand that had been rising into a wave hangs in mid-air; Wolfgang holds his gaze for one more moment, just to be sure the message is clear: they aren’t friends, they aren’t anything.</p><p>(high school!au, Wolfgang+Hernando)</p>
            </blockquote>





	flower past reason

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger/content warnings for: child abuse, violence, gore, food mentions, smoking, drug mentions.

            Wolfgang had never cared for school. It may have taught him how to be quicker and meaner in a schoolyard fight than anyone else, but it never showed him how to take a punch from a father-sized fist. He ditched as often as he could without getting a case officer involved. He liked shop class, though. He liked the practicality of it—see a need, fill a need. He liked being able to stand and move, liked that the grizzled old army vet who taught the class felt his professional responsibilities ended when they all had their safety goggles on.

 

            Everything else could get so loud—Steiner's bragging, his uncle’s diatribes, his father’s ghost—it’s nice to fire up the table saw and drown it all out. There’s only the mechanical hum and the comforting static of Felix chattering the next workstation over.

 

            It’s halfway through class on a Tuesday in October when the Art History class walks in. Wolfgang was mid-project, in the zone, and Felix was debating himself about the relative advantage of having former action stars in political office.

 

            “I mean, obviously The Terminator was a mixed bag. Would probably not recommend to others, but still, I think Sylvester Stalone is exactly what our legislative branch is missing, like just think, the representatives are deadlocked and then the Italian Stallion—“

 

            Wolfgang was grunting in agreement every so often, too busy measuring the iron rods on the table to pay attention to too much else. When he did something, he did it right, and he wasn’t expecting Miss June’s surprisingly loud voice.

 

            “He-ll-o, you lovely adolescents,” she sing-songs, because she was a sixty-something not-so-ex hippie, and she was so genuinely nice that Wolfgang wasn’t terribly annoyed to turn away from his work. “We’re just sitting in for a few days to wrap up our functional art unit.”

 

            Felix makes a fart noise against the inside of his elbow while pretending to scratch the back of his neck that gets their class to snickering. A boy with horn-rimmed glasses a rolls his eyes pointedly in their direction.

 

           “Don’t mind us,” she continues, “We’re just flies on the wall, go on and do your thing.” She finishes with a playful wiggle of her jeweled fingers, nice or not, Wolfgang turns away as soon as it’s obvious he no longer has to listen.

 

            “'Functional art,’ you believe this shit?” Felix mutters at him and Wolfgang shrugs, turns back to the table.

 

            “I’m a simple man,” he replies, trying to figure out where the blue chalk he was using to double check that the bars were exactly 6 feet and two inches long had gotten to. He lifts the sketches he drew up before class to get some credit for what should have been a blueprint, but it wasn’t there. It wasn’t tucked into the 99 cent notebook that was the closest thing he had to a backpack or any academic preparation. It hadn’t rolled off the table into the folds of his leather jacket, and finally he drops down to check the floor, now with an irritated clench to his jaw.

 

            “Oh for fucks sake,” he says, probably too loud for a classroom environment.

 

            “These are nice,” someone says above him, and there’s the sound of rustling papers. “Art nouveau meets steam-punk or something.”

 

            Wolfgang jerks his head up to see the boy with the glasses earnestly examining his sketches.

 

            “It’s a lamp,” Wolfgang tells him in a tone of voice suggesting the other boy is ridiculous.

 

            “I got that, actually,” he says back, pleasantly sarcastic, and holds up the rogue stick of chalk. Wolfgang plucks it out of his hands. The boy makes himself at home at the far corner of the workstation, pushes up bridge of his glasses with one hand while spreading the sketches out on the table with the other. “I’m Hernando, by the way.”

 

            “I don’t remember asking,” Wolfgang shoots back, but there’s no heat in it. Hernando flicks his eyes up and over to him, but doesn’t bother to respond. The room is settling around them, and table saws begin to roar back to life, one after another. Felix trots over from where he’d been doing his best to chat up a girl with pink streaks in her dreads, gives Hernando a once over before turning back to Wolfgang.

 

            “Dude, I just struck out harder than I have ever struck out before,” he groans. Felix had always been almost as open about his failures as he was about his successes. Wolfgang never understood it—in his family, failure only ever meant blood and bruises.

 

            “Really?” He asks, fondness tucked in the upturned corner of his mouth. “Coz that lifeguard last summer backhanded you so hard I almost felt it.” Hernando snickers next to him.

 

            “Yeah, Amanita doesn’t actually play for your team. Like at all,” he tells them, and Felix sighs dramatically. Wolfgang goes back to measuring.

 

            When he is absolutely certain he’s got everything right, he turns on his own table saw. Hernando starts so hard his stool rocks noisily on the linoleum floor and Wolfgang raises his eyebrows at him, teasing. The cutting is quick and smooth; he has steady hands.

 

            He is musing absently about the details he wants to add to the base when the bell rings. He reaches for his sketches without thinking, hand patting where they should be. He turns his head when his fingers only find the imitation wood of the table, just catches Hernando leaning forward to scoot the papers into his hand’s reach.

 

            “Thanks,” he says with a half-smile that feels like a reflex, which is strange because he’s never met Hernando before, and he’s not what anyone would call a people person. Hernando smiles with all his teeth.

 

            “See you tomorrow,” he says back, and Wolfgang grunts while shrugging on his jacket. He stuffs the sketches into his notebook and strides out of the classroom without looking back. He slows when he hears Felix calling after him, gives the other boy time to fall into step.

 

            “He seems cool,” Felix says, swinging his obviously empty backpack up onto one shoulder.

 

            “Yeah,” Wolfgang feels oddly out of sorts, and it makes his voice sharper than normal, “Yeah, he’s alright.” 

 

* * *

  

            He almost doesn’t go to class the next day. He’s a fighter, but half of that is knowing the odds, and he feels like they're against him, like he’s all turned around. He goes, because truancy this early in the school year is a thing that gets his uncle involved, and he’d rather avoid that if he can. By the time he gets there, Felix and Hernando are talking about _Predator_.

 

            “I mean, the reduction of these symbols of hypermasculinity to prey status is fascinating,” Hernando says earnestly, “They’re all twitching muscles and nervous eyes—“

           

            “And Arnold is a fucking beast, man!”

 

            “Right? The man becomes an animal to fight an alien—“ Wolfgang slaps his notebook down on the table.

 

            “I leave you two alone for a minute and you go full dork.”

 

            “Green is an ugly color on you,” Felix says with a smirk, and Wolfgang makes a face at him on his way back to the locker. The tube is a copper pipe that he may or may not have stolen from the housing development off of Cranbeck, and he found some gears and car rims in the junkyard by the county line that he wants to use for the base and the mogul, somehow.

 

             Hernando watches him walk back with full arms, chin propped easily in his hand. Wolfgang has that same nagging feeling of déjà vu, tries to play it off.

 

             “You got no work in that art class of yours, or is staring at me part of your participation grade?”

 

             “It is, actually,” Hernando says easily, “We’re supposed to see how the utilitarian and the ornamental interact, the instinct for aesthetic while the goal is still function.”

 

            Wolfgang rolls his eyes, shakes head.

 

            “Jesus,” he says, “Goddamn art kids.”

 

* * *

 

 

            He’s a child again, he can feel it in the frailness of his bones, the bigness of the house around him. Everything is grey and cold, and somewhere his father is roaring. He can almost smell the alcohol on his breath, the sound of it is a wind that pulls at his clothes, carries away the frantic whimpering that is his own breathing. His heart is pounding in his chest like a trapped rabbit, the panic is all consuming. He runs and he’s so slow it’s agonizing, and as he’s running the furniture grows, or maybe he shrinks, but he is like a mouse weaving around the tree-like legs of tables and chairs.

 

            He hears footsteps like drums, and he’s almost there, almost to his room. He throws the door closed behind him, and the Conan poster rattles and rustles just like it used to. He crawls under the bed and that’s the same too. His father is so close the floor beneath him shakes with every step, the toys shake and fall on their shelves, the pictures his mother hung on the wall before she Left rattle and tremble. He feels like he is going to explode or collapse in on himself; he’s so cold he can’t stop his teeth from shattering.

 

            The door flies open and he opens his mouth to scream. Nothing comes out.

 

            Wolfgang shoots up, out of the dream and out of his bed. He gasps loudly in the dark quiet of his room—his room in his uncle’s house, years between him and the nightmare.

 

* * *

 

 

            “It really is nice,” Hernando says while Wolfgang meticulously files down even the slightest edge. Once he set his mind to something, it always got done, down to the letter. “Strong lines, clean, simple, honest—like exposed brick. Only, you know, minus the hipster bullshit.”

 

            “And tonight on Luscious Lamps, Hernando goes to bat for Wolfgang Bogdanow's latest endeavor,” Felix says to their right, mock-dramatic. Wolfgang doesn’t hear him. He’s somewhere else, somewhere warm and safe, and he hears Hernando’s voice. He can’t make out what he’s saying, but the tone is familiar, excitement and passion turning commentary into poetry. The lump in his throat and the blooming feeling somewhere between his ribs feels—well, it’s what Wolfgang imagines love would be like.

 

            “Hey, Wolfgang!” He snaps out of, back to shop class with its fluorescent lighting and clinging smell of boy-sweat. Hernando and Felix are looking at him strangely.

 

            “Dude, if you smoked without me, I’m going to be so pissed,” Felix grumbles.

 

            “Or did you forget to eat your Wheaties this morning?” Hernando asks, looking a little concerned. Wolfgang manages a grin, trying for devilish.

 

            “Nah, just didn’t get much sleep last night, if you catch my drift.” Hernando rolls his eyes, and Felix elbows him the ribs.

 

            “Pics or it didn’t happen, man. Or details, at least, details. Chivalry’s dead, you know.”

 

            The bell rings and Wolfgang is too grateful to gag at the irony. Hernando reaches out to shake their hands, and it’s so formal they can’t help but smirk at him.

 

            “Gentlemen,” Hernando says, committing to the theme, “It has been an honor and a privilege to observe you in your natural habitat. I shall remember this experience with great affection.” When he bows, Felix erupts into his patented horse-like laughter.

 

            “Fucking art kids, man!”

 

* * *

 

 

            It’s not a small school, but if Wolfgang had used the main hallways or been remotely on time to any of his classes, he probably would have bumped into Hernando before Thanksgiving break.

 

            Steiner may like the whispers and looks, the infamy of their last name, but Wolfgang never had a stomach for it. The Bogdanow family name only ever made his teeth grind and his stomach roil, and every few years some enterprising asshole went digging. Court transcripts being a matter of public record made their family an urban legend. Maybe it would have been different if his father had been like Sergei, had been smart enough to at least appear to keep his nose clean. Instead, he was a load drunk with sticky fingers and a mean streak. So he’s the son of a dead thief, mysteriously murdered in an empty street downtown when he was thirteen.

 

            The only reason he’s in the cafeteria is because he’d darted out of the house without his wallet. Felix has lunch detention for improperly handling chemicals in chemistry (read: trying to inhale the gases of something that’s probably older than both of them), and he’s starving, and knows that you can grovel for a free sandwich.

           

            He doesn’t shrink from the eyes on him, glares back and through. He’s not proud of his blood or his name, but Wolfgang doesn't shirk from it either. Hernando is sitting at a table by the window overlooking the stairs to the service alley. He beams at Wolfgang like he’s glad to see him, like they know each other, like they’re friends. There is a reverberating pang in Wolfgang’s chest, like he just took a blow, but also like he’s feeling the echo of an old ache.

 

            It’s just too fucking weird, this almost-knowing, already-caring he feels even as his brain starts and stutters over it like it’s a scratched CD. He meets Hernando’s gaze, lifting his chin, and glares like he’s anyone else Wolfgang wants to scare off. Hernando’s smile falters, the hand that had been rising into a wave hangs in mid-air; Wolfgang holds his gaze for one more moment, just to be sure the message is clear: they aren’t friends, they aren’t anything.

 

            He turns on his heel, suddenly feeling too sick to be hungry.

 

* * *

 

 

            Wolfgang doesn’t see him again until February. He’d stayed up late binge watching the singing contest of the season, then slept through two alarms. He’s already missed homeroom and the better part of chemistry; if it wasn’t that the quarter isn’t even halfway over and he’s got one more unexcused absence before things start getting Serious, he wouldn’t have bothered coming at all.

 

            The snow had melted overnight and frozen over again in the early morning chill, covered again with a new layer of snow. If he’d gone in through the school’s front doors and picked up a late slip like he was supposed to, he wouldn’t have had to worry about falling and cracking his head open. But sneaking up along the un-shoveled, unsalted sidewalk along the edge of the parking lot and behind the storage sheds means he might be able to keep this whole thing to himself. If all goes well he can slide into his seat and watch Mr. Head snore his way through the movie they’ve been watching and re-watching for the past three days.

 

            He’s focusing on distributing his weight just so with each step when he rounds the corner of the little concrete building where they keep the industrial-sized lawn mower they use on the football and soccer fields. Felix has been toying with the idea of stealing one, going for a joyride when spring comes, and he thinks about checking out the padlock, lifts his head, and sees Hernando.

 

            He’s leaning against the building, hands deep in his jacket pockets, chin nestled into the knot of his scarf. He must hear Wolfgang’s footsteps because he turns toward him, pushing off the wall with his shoulders. His smile is open and eager until he processes that Wolfgang isn’t who he was waiting for. Shock flashes across his face, then panic, and Wolfgang puts his hands up, like he’s shushing a spooked animal.

 

            They don’t say anything, and the world around them is hushed for a moment. Wolfgang drops his hands and nods before walking carefully past him, close enough that he imagines he can feel the heat from his body. He doesn’t look back. It’s none of his business.

 

* * *

 

 

            He’s out walking, had left the house knowing that if he heard Steiner even breathe, he was going to bash his rat-like teeth in. It’s hot for midnight in April and he’s barely made it three miles before his shirt is soaked in sweat. He doesn’t know why he takes a right on Ashbrooke, he normally goes left—then again, he normally calls Felix, lets his white noise chatter slowly drive the snarling anger out of his chest. It’s not a normal night, though.

 

            He’s passing the empty lot behind the cul-de-sac of McMansions (“imitation elegance” his uncle likes to sneer in their direction, and just the thought makes Wolfgang’s hackles rise) when he hears it. You see, there’s a distinct tone to someone getting the shit kicked out of them, the kind you never forget once you've heard it—or felt it. It’s the cadence of punches and kicks, the audible rippling of struck skin, the wet thud of bruising meat.

 

            He’s no Good Samaritan; fighting is just what he does, and suddenly his blood is boiling for it. By the time he makes his way over, he sees that it’s seven against one—eight if you count the asshole recording the whole thing on his phone. The fire in his blood has steeled into ice. He’s quiet, punches one kid in the softness at the base of the skull and another in the kidneys before they know what hit them. One down, one wounded.

 

            A punch grazes his jaw, he lands a better one in the gut and jack-knifes his knee up into the boy’s face for good measure. Two down. The flash from phone shines down on the prone body on the ground as its owner disappears into the dark. He catches a glimpse of horn rimmed glasses and a mouth he shouldn’t be able to recognize on sight: Hernando. The fire is back with a vengeance, driving out the sure coolness, thundering in his ears. He punches the nearest body in the throat, kicks out viciously at another knee and then a stomach when that one hits the ground. Four down, based on the choking noise.

 

            The last three seemed to have reconsidered their life choices, go sprinting and cursing into the night, their battered friends limping after them. Wolfgang looks down at the first guy who’s still knocked out cold, limbs splayed, and seriously considers stomping down on his head until there’s nothing left for his mother to cry over.

 

            But Hernando is getting up with a groan, and he can’t focus on anything else. He darts to the other boy’s side, puts a hand out to steady him, never actually makes contact. It is very dark without the light from the phone, and the moon casts just enough light to make out silhouettes.

 

            “You alright, man?” He asks in a voice that's gruff with concern, and Hernando huffs, wiping at his mouth, and straightens his glasses.  He can’t quite stand straight and Wolfgang finally clasps awkwardly at his shoulder.

 

            “Oh, you know,” Hernando grunts, patting at his hand, head turning toward the still body on the ground. “He’s alive, right?”

 

            Wolfgang watches the boy’s chest rise and fall, welcomes the familiar surge of rage in his belly—likes it better than the rampant worry constricting his lungs.

 

            “Yes,” he replies darkly. The ‘for now’ hangs silently in the air, heavy enough that it might as well have been spoken.

 

            “Good, that’s good.” Hernando finally straightens, rolling his shoulders tenderly, the grimace audible in his labored breathing. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

 

            They walk in silence out of the lot, and Wolfgang doesn’t hesitate when Hernando takes them down the cul-de-sac, following at his elbow. When they reach the first streetlamp, he sees that it could have been worse. Hernando’s glasses are lopsided, and a lens is cracked, but aside from a split lip his face seems unscathed. He’s still walking gingerly, and his arms are scraped and bruised—he probably hit the ground with the first punch and then went fetal, shielded his head. It was a smart move—and the default for anyone used to playing the punching bag. Wolfgang clenches his jaw so hard it’s a miracle his molars don’t shatter.

 

            “Why’d they do it?” He grits out, and Hernando shoots him a sidelong glance.

 

            “Why do you think?” It’s a stupid question; Hernando’s Vice President of the Gay Straight Alliance, and has been out since eighth grade. The veneer of civility that makes a great selling point on Open Nights every fall is every bit as real as a rhinestone. Wolfgang wants to go back and strangle that kid with his bare hands.

 

            “This way,” Hernando says suddenly, interrupting the homicidal fantasy as he leads them up a driveway, over to a gate in the fence separating the backyard from the driveway. He reaches up and over, undoing the lock and pushing the door open with his hip. “My family’s out of town,” he assures when he sees Wolfgang wince at the loud creaking of the hinges.

 

            The yard is a fraction of the size of his uncle’s sprawling estate, and the pool has nothing on the echoing opulence of the one at the country club. But there’s a twelve-seat table on the deck, a wooden playhouse in the back corner of the yard, and an ashtray on a table by the pool. If it makes Wolfgang wistful, no one needs to know.

 

            Hernando sticks his hand into the backside of a large planter by the deck, pulls out a pack of cigarettes with a waggle of his eyebrows. He toes off his shoes and drops down heavily at the edge of the pool, puts his feet in with a contented sigh. He pushes his shorts well up above the waterline before opening the pack, pulling out a bright orange mini-Bic and lighting a cigarette. Wolfgang is still standing stiffly over by the gate and Hernando looks back at him, tilting his head invitingly towards the pool.

 

            “C’mon, hero, _mi casa es su casa_.” Wolfgang doesn’t move for a long second, tries to figure out how he ended up here, quickly gives up because it doesn't make any fucking sense. He grabs the ashtray on his way over and puts it down next to Hernando, hesitates again. But the water glimmers so invitingly, and he can’t think of anything he wants more in that moment than a swim. He pulls off his shirt, barely blinks at the flecks of blood that are glaringly stark on the white cotton even in the wavering light of the pool fixtures. His boots go next, then his jeans. When he sits down to pull off his socks, his shoulder jostles Hernando’s, and he’s given up on wondering why it feels so comfortable, so comforting.

 

            He slides into pool in one smooth motion, toes curling along the edge to propel him through the water. The chill of it gives him the kind of goose bumps he gets when a girl drags her fingers through his hair, fingernails scratching deliciously along his scalp. He absently notices a sharpness along his knuckles where the chlorine stings the scraped and split skin. He swims lazy laps, enjoying the way the water muffles and mutes everything, likes the easy silence of Hernando smoking nearby.

 

            He has no idea what time it is when he finally pulls himself out of the water, but he’s finally stopped feeling like a livewire. He flops down next to Hernando, turns when he feels eyes on him. His brain is clearer now, and the friendliness on Hernando’s face makes him feel strangely like an imposter—and this is familiar-but-not too, this gnawing guilt, this feeling of unworthiness.

 

            “Don’t get any ideas,” he says quietly. “I’m not a good person.” It’s supposed to be a warning, a sign in big bold letters, but instead it comes out sad, even plaintive. Hernando looks down at him through broken glasses, and smiles softly. 

 

* * *

 

 

            He dreams of setting his father’s car on fire. He watches the skin melt off the man’s bones, smells the gasoline and smoke, feels the extension cord wrapped around his fist. Everything is as it was, the relief at being free of a monster, the hollowness of knowing he’s become one. But he turns and now there’s a woman all in white, and she cups his jaw in her soft, cold hand. Her thumb brushes across his cheek and her eyes are sad and sweet.

 

            In the dream, he calls her mother.


End file.
